I have spent the past 20 years trying to understand why it is that so many of us little guys fail, and developing solutions to the symptoms. But the core reason is that everyone - from government, via big business, through small business, into micro business, and into the employed halls of academe - has got it wrong. A small business is NOT a littler version of a big business.

Yet all our formal business training, all the books, all the courses, every single concept we learn - treats a small business as if it were a tiny version of a 'big' business.

I had an 'aha' moment this past week, kind of like the day I discovered that half the world's population was missing a winkle. A shattering discovery, but life has been a lot more interesting since. And so it is with this issue of where we differ from the big guys. Once you know the differences you can begin to understand why they behave the way they do. (It's all because big firms don't have winkles.)

Have you ever met an individual absolutely focused on getting rich, no matter how irresponsibly, and quite unconcerned about putting others at risk to satisfy this all-consuming goal? An individual quite happy to manipulate everything and anybody? A bombastic person who assures you that s/he is number one, refusing to accept responsibility for his/her actions, and feeling no remorse for the consequences? A person who relates to others just superficially via make-believe versions of him/her/self? Yet isn't that exactly what a big firm is?

The first fallacy is that we little guys share the same reason for existence as the big fellows - the goal of profit maximisation. We don't usually. Don't get me wrong. Profit is pretty important, but we little folk are usually trying to mould a career that fits our lifestyles, and our venture is as much 'personal' as it is 'business'. Most of us are more concerned about a whole range of other issues - because we have to report back to our wives, husbands, children, parents - than we are about that single measure - profit. We aren't being measured on just one factor, isolated from all the others.

The second fallacy is that we small business owners can separate 'business' from 'personal'. We can't. And we can't hide behind 'it's our policy', because it isn't. [It might be if we had time to think about it, let alone write one down.] We're flying this rickety business plane by the seat of our pants, and doing the best we can, within the moral constraints we had when growing up. One of those constraints is 'you must not be greedy'. This is usually a real killer when it comes to defining any sort of vision.

Ask anybody what kind of car they want to drive in 5 years time, and the answer is likely to phrased thus: "Well, I want a nice car. I don't really want a Porsche, but just a nice car." And the amazing thing is that the Universe grants their wish every time. They don't get a Porsche! We're not really good at defining true goals - because we still feel that they're kind of greedy. Unlike a firm, where greed is admired and written about in financial journals. Except that they call it profit maximisation.

That's why the SA version of Black Economic Empowerment probably won't work within 99% of small businesses. Our business is simply too personal to give a chunk of it away. Now that I think about it - it's got nothing to do with business. It's not as if I was an employed MD negotiating to give away a large chunk of some anonymous shareholders' stock away. This is my baby; the product of a pregnancy of years of 8 day weeks of 25 hour days. This isn't business, this is my legacy to my children. On top of which it only exists because the bank is financing it by taking ownership of my home, my car, my furniture, my kids toys, and the family gerbil's spawn to the 7th generation. Nobody else could pay me to enslave myself as I do.

As individuals we behave quite differently than as a group. As individuals we take responsibility for our personal actions. But in a group we do not. The fiction of a big firm is that the individuals behind it - the shareholders or beneficiaries are responsible for selecting a management to fulfill their wishes, and that said management actually does what the shareholders want. Yet we small business owners have no option because we are the shareholders as well as the management. In fact, we are also the workers! When last did the MD of a big corporate sweep the reception area, make coffee, clean the guest toilet, install the server, rewire the telephone, wash the delivery van, stand in a queue at the bank/post office/Telkom/municipality/...?

Why is it that we mentally separate the concepts of 'business' and 'personal'? It's as if, because it is 'business' we have an excuse to suspend our humanity. Surely that can't be right?

Some time ago some budding psychology students at a leading university devised a dastardly psychology experiment. Basically, they set up an environment in which an actor was connected to some evil electronic equipment. Then they 'employed' a few students as temps to 'manage' the console and inflict various degrees of pain on the recalcitrant victims inside. In each case they spun a very plausible story to the student temps - revolving around how their remuneration depended on how much hurt they inflicted. It wasn't personal. It was business.

They were stunned to find how easily these normal people would rapidly gain confidence in hurting the victims. Of course, the actors really hammed it up, and were awfully vocal in their 'agony'

A few years later a different group of students duplicated the experiments, but this time they used monkeys. The inducement this time was food. The more pain inflicted, the more food the monkey temp received. No pain, no grain.

They were stunned to find that the monkeys simply refused to inflict pain on each other. They would rather starve. So much for our humanity, methinks.